Civilization 6 - Review @ PC Gamer

[HiddenX]

PC Gamer has reviewed Civilization 6 and they really like it:

Civilization 6 Review

Civilization 6 is the ultimate digital board game. More than ever in the series, the board—the world—is the soul of every opportunity and challenge. As usual for Civ, I build empires, compete for a set of victory conditions, and fend off warmongering leaders like that scoundrel Peter the Great. But I’m also playing for, with, and against the board. Forests and deserts and resource-rich tundras each influence the flow of my civilization, granting us boons and burdening us with lasting weaknesses. Bands of barbarians put my farms in crisis, but also open up opportunities to speed the development of my military techs. The glorious, challenging dynamics that emerge from Civ 6’s redesigned maps left me with no question that the storied series has crowned a new king.

[...]

Sight, sound, and systems harmonize to make Civilization 6 the liveliest, most engrossing, most rewarding, most challenging 4X in any corner of the earth.

Score: 93/100

Thanks henriquejr!

More information.

 

[CRD]

yeah, they gave the same score to civilization v.

They can't be trusted.

 

[GroNolife]

Civ 6 is much better than the previous versions : I've started to play a few hours ago (as soon as it was available on Steam in my country) and there's no doubt for me that I'm going to spend (but not waste in my opinion) sooo much time on it because it is absolutly great ! Thanks Sid you rule !

 

[Silver]

I've been playing the Romans all day. Having roads being auto-built between cities is a great bonus for your war machine. I like that I can properly develop my economy this time and get things sped up if I'm clever. ie production, research

 

[SSIGuy]

So jealous... I'm without my gaming PC and am waiting for the Mac version to be released. Should be soon but the wait is excruciating!

 

[Capt. Huggy Face]

I can't resist a Civ game. Looks good to me. Runs like a charm on my little laptop (integrated Intel HD 5500). Enjoyed my first no-so-serious trial run. Settled my Indians all close to the French, who didn't waste much time launching a surprise attack and wiping out my civilization.

 

[Odrid]

I didn't had a chance to play, as the download and install finish at about 2am
But i did started a game (with Russia).. just to look at it, no turns played. I can honestly say i don't like the graphic style... way too consolish/cartoonish for my taste. I did liked the fow art style though.

 

[SSIGuy]

Runs like a charm on my little laptop (integrated Intel HD 5500).

What CPU do you have in your laptop?

 

[joxer]

Finished the tutorial pretty quick (it says to capture the opponent's capital but you'll win if you capture any town they have). The tutorial is game's barebones ofc.

Then I went duel small map against one opponent. Random leaders, game set me to play China against Egypt.
The music while playing China is irritating. You get to build walls to protect your cities (basically up the defense total) which is superb addition earlygame so you don't have to spam many military units and some silly crouching tiger units as I didn't care about these.
Cleopatra was unhappy with me all the time, she threatened, mocked, insulted me, but still she didn't dare to declare a war on me. And then after about couple of hours of my "testing" the game, a screen pops up and say "cultural victory!". Say what?! I didn't even force any culture, dunno what happened there, how did I win?

This game is very different from it's predecessors. While I did win my first duel, it'll take number of matches to learn and understand everything.
Some stuff are explained through advisor - you don't build roads as before but merchants do it automatically while on routes. What the game won't tell you is that these merchants are a superb investment as they quickly turn into highly profitable units - unless barbarians intercept them. And you can't have numerous merchants, to get another you need to build something (trading district or harbor for example).
Advisor also won't tell you what the hell are tourism points. You get these with masterpieces and masterpieces are made by great artists (they spawn over time). That's an example of something I still need to find out what is it for.
Etc etc.

About performance, I moved both preset sliders on ultra, used ingame benchmark and it's well over 80 FPS all the time. Which I don't care as this is not a shooter so 60 FPS would be more than enough. CPU is i5 4670K and is not overclocked.

About annoyances, so far only one - bloody subtitles are not turned on by default.

Anyway…
Why is this game in news? Civ6 is not RPG.

 

[kopija]

Do units have Jesus-like capability to walk on water like in numero V or do you have to actually build ships to move them across water?
I read the comments on that article and am sure the author cannot be trusted because he fails to mention horrible AI.
And he supposedly endorsed V with the same score.

 

[joxer]

Dunno about waterwalking, but each leader has their specific bonus so it's possible some units can do it by default. Otherwise you need to research some tech to allow otherwise ground units to sail - no, you don't have to build special transport ships for this.

Can't confirm AI being horrible based on just one short game I did.
And it was a duel - against only one opponent. My problem was not dealing with the second civilization but with barbarians. These are spawning like crazy and are trying to destroy everything you have. In fact now when I think about it, the reason Cleopatra didn't attack me might be because she failed against barbarians - they managed to destroy one of her cities or because of their rampage she lost that city due to unhappy citizens, all I know that her city that was closest to my borders simply vanished at a certain point.

I remembered something that could be an annoyance though. The number of city states that appear on the map is not customizable. While I took an advantage of all three I met (via trade routes), I'd want to try a map without any of these which would most probably make things harder. See, these city states are also exploring the map and are killing barbarians that would otherwise swarm all over you.

And also forgot about another annoyance. City names. You cannot rename cities. Yea, WTF.

 

[ChaosTheory]

I'll wait a few more weeks. I remember glowing reviews when Beyond Earth was released, and I was ultimately disappointed. I'm also curious if you can get past, say, 100 turns without game-stopping bugs/memory issues like I had with Civ V.

 

[fadedc]

I've pre-ordered and look forward to playing it, but I'm most concerned about the AI. The mechanics all sound interesting and well thought out, but it doesn't matter if the AI can't put up a fight. There were some early reviews which said that the AI on normal was not very challenging but higher difficulty levels were not available at the time. Reviews are very strong, but reviewers for Civ5 didn't realize the AI was so bad until much later.

 

[joxer]

I'll wait a few more weeks. I remember glowing reviews when Beyond Earth was released, and I was ultimately disappointed. I'm also curious if you can get past, say, 100 turns without game-stopping bugs/memory issues like I had with Civ V.

Not sure how many turns I did, but there wasn't any crash/freeze. I'll check it out today, will do some longrun duel, if I win I'll continue (there's option not to shut it down).

Never bought Beyond Earth. Someone said it's overpriced Civ5 with another skin. After I watched IIRC TB's video, I believed it and didn't buy.

I've pre-ordered and look forward to playing it, but I'm most concerned about the AI. The mechanics all sound interesting and well thought out, but it doesn't matter if the AI can't put up a fight. There were some early reviews which said that the AI on normal was not very challenging but higher difficulty levels were not available at the time. Reviews are very strong, but reviewers for Civ5 didn't realize the AI was so bad until much later.

I don't think a proper evaluation of AI can be made before at least a dozen of playthroughs on different settings. Based on my first "test" game one could conclude Egypt AI sucks, but it's one game where maybe I just got lucky.

 

[Capt. Huggy Face]

What CPU do you have in your laptop?

2.4 GHz i7, 8GB RAM (shared between system and graphics chip), 64-bit Win 8.1.

 

[fadedc]

I don't think a proper evaluation of AI can be made before at least a dozen of playthroughs on different settings. Based on my first "test" game one could conclude Egypt AI sucks, but it's one game where maybe I just got lucky.

Well it depends on why the AI is weak. If it is weak is because it's not properly optimizing it's build orders and city planning, that can take a long time to figure out, and it's easy enough to correct just by giving the AI a production bonus. But if the AI is weak because it's not aggressive and can't make proper use of it's military units, that's going to be obvious much more quickly, and it will take much more than a few bonuses to correct.

 

[Capt. Huggy Face]

I'm not sure my quick trial run is the best metric, but the AI was a lot more aggressive than I saw in a lot of hours in Civ V. I intentionally settled my first city quite close to Paris to shake things up a bit. The French leader sends me a message asking me not to settle so close to her. I reply I will try not to in the future. I later get a message saying I have fulfilled my promise to do so. Soon after, I buy a tile to block her expansion toward a tile with elephants. (Hey, I'm Indian. Those are mine!) Several turns later, but not that many, 4 French warriors appear and move within my borders immediately. She sends me a message saying, essentially, it was nice pretending to be friends, but she is springing a surprise declaration of war on me. The next turn, the 4 warriors quickly crush my fledgling capital.

This was far more aggressive AI than I saw in Civ V, where I routinely bought tiles to block others' expansion and got a lot of verbal complaints but little action as a result.

 

[joxer]

AI seems to depend on the leader. While Aztec leader was constantly aggressive on me, I've just finished against Gandhi who didn't bother with armies but tried to convert my civ by religion to his ways. He lost ofc - because I did the cultural win before he made significant progress with his "clerics".

Just to add. I'm 12+ hours in and the game didn't crash nor had any slowdown. There are some annoyances, but nothing that can't be hotfixed. At least I didn't notice something that'd be a gameruiner.

 

[zahratustra]

Can anybody tell me how to move my units across the ocean? I'm in medieval period and have galley and trireme but I'm unable to embark units on them. Right across the ocean there is plenty of room to expand but I'm cramped in place on my continent and the only way forward is war...

 

[Capt. Huggy Face]

Look carefully through the techs. I haven't even tried in Civ VI yet, but in V it was techs. Here, I did find this. Scroll down to the mid-game section, where it says it is the shipbuilding tech to cross water and cartography to enter ocean tiles. I think those are different techs than in Civ V, though I could be wrong. If it's like V, you just move your units into the water.